Stepping toward the podium, Obama dove right in. However, due to technical difficulty, it took Obama three tries to blame Bush for the appalling economy. Stumbling over well-planned condemning comments, even the microphone refused to broadcast Barack’s never-ending drivel.

The solemn, accusatory president began by saying that when elected he was completely unaware of the depth of America’s “economic hole,” let alone how long it would take to “climb out.” However, when in a fix, Obama appears extremely knowledgeable as to how effectively project perpetual culpability onto everyone other than himself.

Obama expressed the following opinion about the flagging economy: “What we did know was that it took nearly a decade – to dig the hole we are in.” Then the President gave himself eight years of economic leeway following the “dig the hole” comment with an “even longer to dig our way out.”

After the sound system issues, garbled statements and flyover airplane interference ceased, the President continued blaming G.W. and then segued directly into pointing the finger at Senate Republicans. Never once did Obama acknowledge any personal culpability for being completely and hopelessly clueless.

Maybe someone should have raised their hand and reminded Obama that during the first six years of Bush’s tenure the economy was booming. It was the last two years, after a national referendum on Iraq, that Democrats took over both houses and the economy began to falter. Adding Obama’s liberal-socialistic policies to the already ailing economy turned a benign common cold into a case of full-blown pneumonia.

Obama claimed Republicans are now in the process of obstructing an “initiative [he] proposed to cut taxes that will encourage small businesses to hire and expand, as well as a $30 billion small business lending initiative.”

Partisan President Obama actually had the temerity to accuse Senate Republicans of damaging economic growth by “holding this bill hostage.” The man who impedes everything from individual freedom to economic recovery dramatically uttered the scripted slogan: “Drop the blockade.”

Soberly droning on, uttering meaningless poppycock, Obama continued reading off the teleprompter. The president’s rhetoric included references to small businesses, middle class tax cuts, job creation and economic growth. As usual, in a five-minute statement Obama managed to fit in incendiary lingo like “partisan minorities” and “political games.”

Towards the end, the sun must have been in Obama’s eyes because the President stumbled over words like “effort,” correcting it to “attack.” Before turning and walking away, the smooth talker slipped up and blurted out the very apropos “silver spoon” instead of “silver bullet.”

The effect?

A few hours after the technically-challenged economic encouragement/blame-Bush undertaking, the Dow plummeted 140 points, proving the point that, like everything Barack does, the ready-to-wreak-havoc Rose Garden declaration was just another in a long list of “smashing” Obama successes.

As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.

According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.

The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion.
…
The CBO figures show that the most expensive year of the Iraq war was in 2008, the year when the surge proposed by Gen. David Petraeus and approved by President Bush was in full swing and the turning point in the war. The total cost of Iraq operations in 2008 was $140 billion. In 2007, the cost of Iraq operations was $124 billion.

Soofi was apparently allowed to travel to Chicago, where he checked luggage on a flight bound for Washington-Dulles and eventually Yemen. But instead of boarding that flight, Soofi joined Al Musiri on the United flight from O’Hare to Amsterdam.

On learning this, Customs and Border called the Dulles flight back to the gate and removed Soofi’s luggage. No explosives were found

Meanwhile, let your 90-yr old grandma try to carry a nail file into her plane…

Holes continue to grow in the dry run story. Interviews with law enforcement and airline personnel have brought up a key question.

It remains unreported where exactly al Soofi went through customs — namely in Birmingham or Chicago. This would help explain whether or not al Soofi’s luggage had been cleared all the way to Yemen in Alabama. If not, he would have had access to the box cutters and knives in his bags, as well as his mock bombs, at the airport in Chicago when he retrieved them to transfer to an international flight. If he was cleared all the way to Yemen, then when he was in Chicago he would have moved through a secure area during his transfer process. Once an international passenger has been cleared by U.S. customs, the federal security rules change considerably. If al Soofi was cleared for international travel in Birmingham, Alabama, then he should not have been able to change his ticket to an entirely different continent (Europe) so easily in Chicago — certainly not without his bags coming off the Yemen-bound airplane. The air carrier involved in the Yemen-bound flight has not been named and United Airlines has not returned calls.

On the President’s first day back in the office from vacation, facing a deteriorating economic horizon, one Internet site is claiming he has returned to a newly redecorated Oval Office, complete with new carpets and drapes.

A White House spokesman tells ABC News the administration will have no immediate comment on the Drudge Report that “workers have been busy installing new carpets, drapes, painting, etc. in Oval Office.” But mediamatters.org, a progressive media watchdog site, has pounced, defending the Obama administration.

Of course Media Maters blamed Bush. Who else! Change!

Obama’s giving a speech from the Oval Office but we won’t get to see the new decor:

The President has a prime time address scheduled Tuesday evening from the Oval Office on the end of combat operations in Iraq, but under traditional White House protocol, the network television camera will be allowed to focus only on the President at his desk, without wider angle views of the office drapes and furniture.

The Senate is expected to confirm Mr. Palmer for Caracas after its summer recess, but some of his confirmation answers have riled the Venezuelan caudillo. Answering a dozen pointed questions from Richard Lugar of Indiana on human rights and the like, Mr. Palmer went way out on a limb and said U.S. policy should work to “bolster regional cooperation to support democracy and human rights.”

He also suggested that José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, should use his office to do the same. He said time and events would determine whether “OAS member states decide to honor their commitments under the Charter and stand up in defense of democracy in Venezuela, or wherever it is threatened.” This kind of thing infuriates Mr. Chávez, who has been trying to dominate the OAS and has rolled over Mr. Insulza like fresh asphalt.

Regarding the Venezuelan military, Mr. Palmer referred to its “clear ties” with guerrillas fighting the Colombian government, a decline in its professionalism due to politicization, and concern that “Cuba’s influence within the Venezuelan military will grow.”

That was all too much for Señor Chávez. “How do you think, Obama, that I am going to accept that gentleman as ambassador? It’s impossible,” he said on his TV program. “He ruled himself out, breaking all the rules of diplomacy, having a go at us, even the armed forces. Probably you will withdraw him, Obama. Don’t insist, I’m asking you.”

Here is Hugo saying it (video in Spanish)

Hugo says [my translation; if you use this translation please link to the posst and credit me. thank you],

It’s impossible for [Palmer] to be accepted by a worthy country, regardless of its being a revolutionary government or not. It’s unacceptable in diplomacy, in the customs, in international law, for a person, even being ambassador, to declare themselves on the internal situation of the country where he will work, in the way Mr. Palmer has… because the receiving country has to protect itself and its relations with the other country.”

Considering how fond Liberals are of pulling the bigotry card any time anyone doesn’t agree with Obama’s policies and/or appointees, does this make Hugo racist?